


The Broken Bridge

by idlesuperstar



Series: A Difficult Man To Kill [2]
Category: LE CARRE John - Works, The Looking Glass War - John Le Carré
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 11:27:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21445459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idlesuperstar/pseuds/idlesuperstar
Summary: It’s interesting, Avery thinks, as he works methodically through the reports, how easy it is to continue to work, even though it’s totally meaningless.
Relationships: (past), John Avery/Fred Leiser
Series: A Difficult Man To Kill [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1546048
Comments: 7
Kudos: 8





	The Broken Bridge

**Author's Note:**

> This begins directly after the end of John Le Carré's[_The Looking Glass War_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Looking_Glass_War) (click the link for a prècis if you've not read it) - late November 1965 - and runs through until approximately January 1967. 
> 
> Title from Graham Greene's _The Power and the Glory_: “You cannot control what you love - you watch it driving recklessly towards the broken bridge, the torn-up track.”

It had been mid-morning when they finally arrived back at London airport. There had been no car to meet them, which had annoyed Leclerc. Smiley had offered the use of his car with self-effacing embarrassment, which annoyed Leclerc even more. And so Avery had spent the journey back to Blackfriars Road uncomfortably wedged up against Jack, staring out of the window at the grey drizzle of the outskirts of London. Leclerc chose to sit in the back seat, an affront to Smiley that tainted the atmosphere of the whole car. Haldane sat in the passenger seat, the silence between him and Smiley that of two men who have said all they had to decades before. Avery wished for space and solitude and for nobody to be touching him, but at the same time feared the moment he would be alone. 

~ ~ ~ ~

He arrives back at the flat at just after lunchtime. Haldane, exasperated beyond anything Avery has seen before, chastised Leclerc for wanting to carry on with work, and brusquely told Avery to get home and get some rest. Sarah is surprised to see him. She’s up and dressed, and looks better. She must see something in his face. 

“You look tired, John,” she says. She’s said it often before, and there has always been an implicit criticism in it. If there is now, he can’t hear it. Her words have lost the ability to pain him. He nods, mutely, and drops his case heavily onto the floor. 

“Go and have a bath,” she says, as if he is ill, “and I’ll get you some food. You must be starving.” 

“Yes.” He pauses, almost too tired to move, and then sits down on the sofa.

“I’ll have a bath later,” he says, after a moment of uncomfortable silence, taking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. For now he just wants quiet, with her in the kitchen, and no-one at his elbow to study him. 

He forces himself to eat something, out of politeness, even though his stomach is in knots from tiredness and misery. He compliments her cooking, and thanks her for the food. It is as if they are new acquaintances, observing the social rituals. There is no animosity between them. He sees her as a person without history. 

Later, she goes ahead of him into the bathroom, saying that she wants an early night. In the bedroom, she sits in bed with a book while he begins to undress. He turns his back to her as he undoes his tie and unbuttons his shirt. When he reaches out to drape his shirt over the chair, she looks up and says, in a mild, almost teasing tone, “Where did you get that watch from, John?” 

He finds himself curled up on the bed, sobbing like a child. He hears Sarah’s wordless confusion, and feels her arms around him, comforting him. He feels like a boy again, feels the comfort of her soft safe body, as if she is his mother. He cries in great ugly jagged gasps, his whole body shaking with it, and she murmurs soothing noises and strokes his back. 

Eventually, after his sobs have lessened and his breathing calmed, he lies there still, cocooned in the safety of her embrace, for the first time in many years feeling that she needs nothing from him. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, after a long silence. 

“Hush, John,” she says, stroking his hair, as she does to Anthony when he is sick, or overtired. They stay like that for long minutes. Finally, he pushes himself up and sits hunched on the bed, wiping his eyes ineffectually with his hands. Sarah is unusually silent, and he looks at her. She is frowning.

“Are you going back to the Department?” 

“I don’t know.”

She makes a sound of frustration and he turns his head away. 

“I’ve been given a few days off. I’ll think about it.” He runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it against the nap, sick of everything. “I don’t know what else to do.”

He feels the tension in her suddenly, as if he’s deliberately disobeyed her. “I don’t want to talk about it now,” he snaps. “I can’t. Just - ” he shrugs off her hand and gets to his feet, turning away from her. “Just leave it for now, alright?” He tries to keep the exasperation out of his voice, and just sounds weary. “I’m too tired. We can talk about it tomorrow.”

“Alright,” she says, bitterly. He goes into the bathroom and starts the taps running. He is filthy from two nights of barely any sleep, unshaven and grimy from their hurried exit the night before. He strips the rest of his clothes off absently, and puts Fred’s watch safely on the windowsill with exaggerated precision. He wipes a hand across the misted-up mirror, and looks at his reflection, blurry and distorted. He looks the same as he ever does, just more tired. There is nothing of the last day, the last week, the last month etched into his face. He looks untouched and untroubled. It feels like a betrayal. 

He wakes out of a shallow, uneasy sleep with a start, his heart thumping, feeling the sweat sticking the hair to his nape, bunching up in the creases of his pyjamas. Sarah is silent beside him, curled into herself, her back to him. He looks at the glowing hands of the alarm clock. Twelve thirty. He gets up, quietly, not wanting to wake her. Putting on his glasses he pads through to the kitchen, taking the bottle of good whiskey down from the top cupboard and pouring a glass. His hand shakes. The last glass he’d poured was for Fred. Before everything. He tries to block the memory out of his mind but it is impossible. Fred saying with odd desperation, _ promise me, John, to look at the moon_. He feels a wave of guilt so strong that he is nearly sick. He had broken the promise. Smiley’s arrival, Smiley shutting down the operation, had thrown everything out of his mind. It had been a scramble of packing and clearing out, of getting on the plane and away, and only once they’d taken off had he looked at his - _ Fred’s _ \- watch and seen that it was two am. He had not kept his promise. The terrible superstitious fear had struck him that if Fred didn’t get out, it would be his fault, for not keeping his promise. 

He downs the whiskey in one gulp, almost choking. The glass rattles horribly loudly as he puts it back on the counter. He looks again at his watch. Germany is an hour ahead. If he goes out and looks at the moon now, Perhaps Fred will be alright. He’ll be looking at it, holed up somewhere safe, or perhaps travelling at night, to get out safely. He pulls his overcoat on over his pyjamas, and quietly lets himself out of the flat, leaving the door on the latch. It is cold in the street, colder than it had been even in Lübeck. He walks to the end of the street, crosses the road into the small scrubby park that Sarah sometimes takes Anthony to. He stands and looks at the sky, cloudy and dark grey, shivering in his overcoat and pyjamas, a mocking parallel to two nights before with Fred. He is gripped with fear, fear that he can’t see the moon behind the clouds. Fear sloshing around in him, clashing up against the inescapable memory of Fred’s hands on him, the thrill of it, the ache of the loss. 

The moon drifts suddenly from behind a cloud, and he thinks of Fred saying _ Promise me, John. _ And _ next time, John_. And _ that was the best time, John. _ And of the feel of Fred’s heart thumping against his chest, and the smell of his hair oil, and the hot electric touch of his tongue. 

He stands in the park, shivering, tears cold on his face. 

~ ~ ~ ~

After three nights Sarah stops pretending she doesn’t notice. When he gets back into bed, quietly, so as not to disturb her, she says in a clear, awake voice, “How long is this going to go on?”

He rolls over to his side, hunching away from her. 

“John,” she says, impatiently. 

“What,” he mutters.

“Are you going to tell me what it’s about?”

“No,” he says, quietly, half hoping she won’t hear. 

“No?” she asks, sitting up, the blankets pulling over him tightly. She switches on her bedside light. He rolls onto his back, sighing, and puts his hand over his eyes. 

“No,’ he says in a flat voice. There is an aching hollowness in his stomach. The moon is waning. 

“John - ”

“No, Sarah,” he says, his voice dull. “No. There’s nothing to say anymore, is there?” He takes his hand away from his eyes and looks at her. He doesn’t have the energy for a fight. She stares at him intently for at least a minute without speaking. There is a frown line between her eyebrows that had not been there when they met. 

Finally, she says, “I want a divorce, John,” in the same matter of fact tone she would use to say_ I want a pound of onions _to the greengrocer. It feels to him like another failure, that she has been the one to say it, not him. 

“You should stay until after Christmas,” she continues in the same tone, “because I don’t want Anthony being upset, but after that, you need to find somewhere else to live. Or,” she says, thoughtfully, “you can keep the flat. Anthony and I can go to mother’s.”

“I don’t want the flat,” he says, even though it is the least important thing. 

“Well, it’s your decision,” she says, and he thinks, when is anything my decision?

She switches the light off, and lies back down, turning her back to him. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, after a while. She doesn’t reply. 

~ ~ ~ ~

After another two days, Avery goes back into the office. There is nothing else for him to do. He’d wandered around the city one morning, ending up in a steamed-up greasy spoon somewhere in Southwark. He sat nursing a stewed mug of tea for an hour, because there were two old men at the next table with accents like Fred’s. He listened to the inflections of their voices. Eventually he left, aware of taking up space for no reason. 

He tramps aimlessly along the river. He could go to a cinema. He remembers Oxford, and not going to the cinema. 

London is decked out in all its Christmas finery, bustling with purposeful crowds. He gazes into the grey slurry of the river, the wind biting his face, and feels that terrible blankness that is worse even than the fear. 

And so he goes back to work. Here at least in Blackfriars Road there is no false cheer, no expectation of festivity. True, Leclerc is humming with excitement over the Budapest information, but the only sign of the season is the fire burning in his room. There is still a hand towel by his basin. Avery listens attentively to him, taking in everything with an anthropologist’s objectivity. 

Everything is as it had been the last time he’d been there. It is easy to imagine that it is these last weeks that have been a fever dream. The golden boys still gaze happily from the walls. Which one is Malherbe, he wonders idly, as Leclerc rattles on. 

It’s interesting, Avery thinks, as he works methodically through the reports, how easy it is to continue to work, even though it’s totally meaningless. 

~ ~ ~ ~

  
  


It is one of the dead days between Christmas and New Year. Avery is in the office because it’s better than being in the flat. Only Pine is there, happy to take the overtime pay. He has long stopped trying to hold a conversation with Avery. 

The office is cold, the weather outside suddenly bitter, frost on the ground overnight. It has been so quiet for so long that Avery is genuinely startled when his phone rings. 

“Hello?”

“Hello?” A hesitant voice. Avery recognises it immediately. “I’m looking for John Avery,” it continues, almost apologetically, as if it were an offensive request.

“Avery speaking.” He’ll make the bastard work for it.

“John, it’s George Smiley here.”

“Yes.”

A pause, no doubt at the curtness of his reply. 

“I wonder if you would have the time to see me, at any point soon?”

Avery almost laughs down the line. Smiley knows damn well how much free time he has. And a request from someone of Smiley’s rank is a thinly disguised order. A residual spark of diplomacy stops him from hanging up, but he says, churlishly, “What about?”

“Well.” A delicate pause. “Something I would prefer to discuss in person.”

A vague curiosity is pulling at him, weak, but enough to prompt him to say, “Alright. I can do - “ he sits back, making Smiley wait. He riffles through the pages of his empty diary. “Next week? Wednesday?”

“That will be admirable,” Smiley says, as if he has believed the subterfuge. “Shall we say lunch at my club? They do a decent leg of lamb on a Wednesday. At least they used to,” he muses, sounding nothing more than an old man approaching dotage. He counters this immediately by giving concise directions, and hangs up with a polite, “Thank you, John,” as if Avery is genuinely doing him a favour. 

Avery sits in silence, looking at the traitorous phone. Bloody George Smiley, he thinks. 

That night, layered up in his thickest jumper under his overcoat - he has given up the pretence of going to bed - he stands muffled in his winter scarf, looking up at the sky. Snow is falling lightly out of the inky blackness, but the sky is clear and the stars pin sharp. There is no moon.

Bloody fucking Smiley, he thinks. I’ll eat the bastard’s lamb and tell him to stuff whatever it is he wants to say up his arse. He clings to the fiction of Smiley being responsible for Fred’s fate as strongly as he clings to his superstition about the moon. 

He shoves his hands further into his coat pockets and tucks his chin into his scarf. The snow falls silently, muffling the pavements and the streets, deadening the nighttime sounds, until the world is cold and white and silent and frozen. 

~ ~ ~ ~

It’s raining when he goes to see Smiley, it’s been raining all day, persistently. January has turned milder and grey; disappointing. The Blackfriars Road building is musty and damp, mould blooming quietly in the corners. Only Leclerc’s office holds any warmth, thanks to Pine’s incessant fire-tending, but it is a damp warmth, smelling of stewed tea and wet umbrellas. 

By the time he arrives at Smiley’s club the collar of his overcoat is soaked and clinging coldly to his neck. He’s left his gloves behind and his hands are wet and cold, red at the knuckles. He feels clammy and out of sorts, even as Smiley makes distressed noises of sympathy at the state of the weather while ushering him to a seat near the fireplace and calling for drinks. 

In the face of Smiley’s solicitude Avery is terse and unforthcoming. Smiley takes it in his stride. 

“How are things at the Department now?” he asks, with what seems to be genuine interest. “I hear good things about the Budapest intel.” 

Avery doubts that anything he could tell Smiley would be news to him. This is small talk, of course, George smoothing the way.

“Yes, we’re getting good information out of there,” Avery says, tonelessly. “Haldane is pleased so far.” He can’t bring himself to speak of Leclerc. 

“Yes, Adrian is very good on that side of things,” Smiley says, thoughtfully. 

Avery takes a gulp of his drink. The legs of his trousers are damp, warming in the heat of the fire. His shirt collar is wet and chafing. Smiley appears to be in no rush, either to speak or to eat. The silence lengthens between them. Let him sweat for it, Avery thinks. 

Finally Smiley leans forward. Avery tenses, bracing for the question, whatever it is, but Smiley simply says, “Shall we eat, John?” and stands up, gesturing towards the dining room. 

It is lamb, and it is very good. Since Sarah left, he’s not had many decent meals. There seems no point in cooking for himself. For the first time he understands the appeal of a gentleman’s club. Better than sitting alone in a restaurant surrounded by happy couples. 

Smiley is a polite and erudite dining companion, discursing on topics as varied as the current political climate in the Balkans, the history of his club, some obscure German authors and the opportunities that a new government might bring to the country. He takes no offence at Avery’s terse replies, and by the end of the meal Avery is beginning to feel ashamed of himself. He is warm and dry, finally, and Smiley has chosen an excellent wine. He is being unconscionably rude, he knows, and Smiley is being incredibly tolerant. 

“I wanted to tell you, John,” Smiley says suddenly, having waited for their plates to be cleared away, “that in no way is what happened with Operation Mayfly your fault.”

_ No, it’s yours, _Avery thinks, incensed, barely keeping from saying it aloud. Instead he says, hotly, “I don’t need you to absolve me of anything, Mr Smiley.” 

“No, no, of course not.” Smiley looks stricken at the thought. “It was a bad business,” he says, almost absently, as if he has forgotten Avery is there. “A bad business,” he says, his mild, magnified eyes focusing on Avery once more. “I don’t want it to affect how you think of the Department. Or of the Service.”

“It hasn’t affected how I think of the _ Department_,” Avery retorts.

“Just the Circus.” 

“Yes,” Avery says, without thinking. “No. I mean,” he says, looking down at the table, avoiding Smiley’s gaze, “I have no particular opinion of the Circus.”

“And you do of the Department, of course. Your loyalty is commendable, John.” 

“It’s not - ” 

“Yes?”

“Nothing. Nevermind.”

“Have you ever thought of the Circus, John?”

“Thought of it? What do you mean, thought of it?” He is becoming belligerent, he knows. Smiley’s indirectness is getting to him. 

“Thought whether you would like to come and work with us,” Smiley says, as if he is asking if Avery wants coffee. Avery raises his head and stares at him. 

“Work at the Circus?” 

“Yes. We’re always in need of new people.”

“So you poach them? Can’t you recruit them yourselves?”

“We do that also, naturally.” Smiley is unperturbed by his rudeness. “We have recruiters in many walks of life, and we choose candidates in many ways. This is perfectly standard procedure.” 

“Why would I want to work for the Circus? I’m fine where I am,” Avery says. Which is the biggest lie he’s told since he said to Fred, _ next time. _The thought of Fred knocks him off balance. He takes a sip of wine, avoiding Smiley’s eye again. 

“Of course, of course,” Smiley says, like he believes him. “It’s just something for you to think about. There’d be training, obviously, because although some things run similarly, others are different. And of course even if you are not to go into the field,” Smiley pauses, “again, well, it’s all very useful. It would be about three months of training, but worth it, in the end, I think,” he muses. 

“Three months?” Avery asks, sharply.

“Yes. It seems like a long time, doesn’t it, from here? But there’s much to learn. A lot of it is practical; combat skills, tradecraft, that sort of thing. And there are always new techniques and training coming in. Even the old hands have to have refreshers occasionally.” Smiley tilts his wine glass, rolling the dregs around. Avery watches him doing it, his mind swirling with too many questions, too many thoughts. _ Three months _. Leclerc had thrown him into an op with nothing more than a conversation. But no, it had been an emergency. There’d been no-one else to send. He’d been happy to do it. George Smiley, with his three months, and his complacency and his smugness can fuck off. 

“I don’t think so, Mr Smiley,” Avery says, finally, trying to keep his voice even. “I think I’m doing good work at the Department at the moment.”

Smiley nods, a little downcast, as if he completely believes him and is sorry to be refused. Avery hates him with such intensity in that moment. He does not need George Smiley’s tactful pity. He suddenly wants to be gone. He stands, abruptly, his chair knocking against his knees. “Thank you for dinner, sir,” he says, mustering politeness. “I’m - I’m sorry to not be what you want.”

“Don’t think of it,” Smiley says, slowly rising and offering a hand to shake. “Good luck, John.”

It is still raining, and colder now. His face feels hot from the wine, and he walks unevenly, as if he’s forgotten quite how his body works. He thinks about the tube and can’t bear the idea of it, decides to walk home. It doesn’t matter, anyway. 

~ ~ ~ ~

He dreams of Leiser, of course. In those dark cold winter days, he often wakes out of a muddled dream of that night in Lübeck, of Fred’s hands on him, of his wiry strength. He fights consciousness until the last minute, until he is unarguably awake, alone. Sometimes he dreams of the last day, of Leiser’s face as he left, of himself crying helplessly in that room. He never dreams he saved Leiser. His subconscious is not that heroic, or unaware.

~ ~ ~ ~

Sometime in - February, he thinks it is, the evenings beginning to lighten, he is sitting at his desk, staring sightlessly at the papers in front of him. He can’t remember what they are, what he’s supposed to be working on, how long he’s been doing this. He knows it’s the afternoon because there is a half-drunk cup of tea at hand, grey and cold. He thinks it might be a Tuesday.

He can hear Leclerc’s voice in the distance, piping and shrill, the one-sided conversation that says he’s on the phone. He can’t make out the words, but something about the tone of it cleaves apart the dullness in his brain for a moment, and he is graced with revelation. Leclerc sounds exactly like a master they had at his prep; an ancient, pompous, womanish creature. A laughing stock with his wistful references to The Great War, his petty manipulations, his dreaded afternoon tea invites. The one master it was embarrassing to be favoured by. They’d sworn, all of them, that if ever they turned out like old Dankworth, it was their comrades’ duty to shoot them, and if they ever encountered a Dankworth in real life - in that fantastical future where they had freedom and power - they would give him what for. 

He is halfway down the corridor before he realises it, spurred on perhaps by that long-ago promise, perhaps by frustration, or boredom, or the sheer desperate urge for _ something _ to happen. He near-stumbles into Leclerc’s office without knocking, which from him is tantamount to barging in spouting profanities. 

Leclerc looks up, surprised, but still talking, certain of his own consequence, of the very _ particular _ urgency of whatever he is demanding. 

Avery stands there, the unwanted girl at a dance. By the time Leclerc has finished his call, Avery’s momentum has ebbed away, leaving him washed up on the shore of his own unimportance. 

“John?” Leclerc prompts, and somehow the fog has crept over Avery’s brain again, muffling whatever it was in Leclerc’s voice that had so enraged him.

“John?” Leclerc asks, more sharply. “Honestly, John, you seem to be rather under par these days,” he says, pettishly. 

Avery scrapes around for an excuse to give, but as he starts to mumble the words, Leclerc is talking over him, voice raised somewhat tetchily. “You appear to be under the impression that this work is something you can just coast through,” he says, and it is so perfect an echo of something Dankworth once said to him, that Avery - like the boy he was - goes hot with the sheer unfairness of it all.

“George Smiley asked to meet me,” he blurts out, his voice unsteady, louder than he meant. His face gets hotter, injustice and embarrassment warring in him. 

“George _ Smiley?” _Leclerc asks, as if it’s as unlikely as Avery having said _ The Prime Minister. _ “_George Smiley?” _ Leclerc repeats, his face suddenly, unbearably _ sympathetic _, as if Avery is a mentally defective child who has got things wrong as usual.

“Yes,” Avery replies, his voice more level. “Yes, he phoned me.”

“George Smiley _ phoned _ you?”

“Yes.” Avery is aware he’s the one sounding like he’s talking to a simpleton now. Is it _ so _unlikely, he wants to say. 

“What on _ earth _ would George Smiley phone you for?” Leclerc says, an expression on his face that Avery assumes is _ bafflement_, or at least Leclerc’s idea of what _ baffled _ should look like. 

“Are you sure,” Leclerc barrels on, “that he meant to speak to _ you _? I mean no disrespect of course, John,” a paternal smile, odious in its condescension, “but I was unaware that George Smiley even knew of your existence.” 

Hot, sudden rage floods Avery, and for a very real moment he thinks he will punch Leclerc in the face. He is overwhelmed with feelings, images - of Leclerc showing him Leiser’s picture, of Haldane’s face in the car on the way back, of the hopeless hollow impotence of sitting weeping, Fred’s watch on his wrist, in that room in Lübeck. And of Smiley in that room, of Smiley saying “I’m sorry. I was sent,” to a blankly furious Leclerc. 

“We met,” Avery says, with a control that he never knew he possessed, “on the Mayfly operation. Surely you remember?”

Leclerc is silent for a moment, his face impassive. Is he remembering, or forgetting? Can he really be so, so - _ thoughtless?_

“So you did, so you did,” he says, with a return to his usual neat blandness. “So George phoned you, eh? And wants to _ meet _ with you?” - his tone that of one humouring a child telling fantastical stories. 

The hot rage in Avery has transmuted somehow, some mysterious alchemy at work, and is now a cold fire. A feeling he has never had before, one of hard, focused control has taken over him. 

Calmly, he says, “He _ wanted _ to meet with me,” as if Leclerc is again the idiot child, “we met some weeks ago. He phoned me not long after Christmas.”

Leclerc’s face goes even blanker, if that is possible. “And you tell me this only now? One assumes it was of no importance then, this _ meeting _ with George Smiley.”

“He offered me a job,” Avery says, with the easy grace of a card player revealing a winning hand. He feels distant, not in the way he has been these last weeks, but as if he’s a giant, a god, looking down on Leclerc from a great height. “I’m going to take it. I’ve come to hand my notice in.” 

Finally something shows on Leclerc’s face. “John, this is _ nonsense,” _ he snaps, eyes narrowing. “Why on _ earth _ would George Smiley offer you a job?” 

Avery looks at him, at this tiny, pointless man, his false idol, his erstwhile god, and tells him the honest truth.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. But he has. And I’m taking it.”

Back at his desk, he feels the world rush back in, dizzying and queasy. He collapses into his chair, scrabbling in his jacket for his wallet, fumbling out the card Smiley gave him at their meeting. The phone receiver is slippery in his hand. He dials the number, and his heart pounds in tandem with the chirp of the dialling tone. It rings and rings, and the fear wells up in his stomach; he pictures Smiley answering, baffled, no such offer ever made; the humiliation of having to crawl back to Leclerc. Just as he’s about to hang up the familiar voice answers, something like resignation in the tone, “George Smiley.”

“Mr Smiley.” He wipes his sweaty palm on the leg of his trousers. “It’s John Avery. Is - is the offer still open?” 

~ ~ ~ ~

Spring starts too warm, sticky and close, oppressive, even out here in the countryside. Thunderstorms threatening but failing to arrive. He wakes, sweating, out of a dream of Fred lying beside him that’s so realistic he puts a hand out to him. It’s an ordinary dream - the solid weight alongside, too warm, too close in the airless heat. He fumbles his glasses on with slippy fingers, stumbles through the dormitory to the bathroom and swipes a cold flannel over his face, his neck, his chest. The windows are all open, but the air hangs thick and still. He sticks his head out into the night, leans bare arms on the splintery window ledge. 

Being at Sarratt1 is not much different to being at school; sleeping in a dorm feels more familiar than sleeping with Sarah ever did. It’s more boisterous, more blokey, more football-and-beer than school ever was, than _ Avery _ever was, but he’s so tired at the end of every day that he falls into sleep regardless. 

There are a couple of swots, of course, eager hands in the air during lectures, but they’re keen rather than wet, and take the accompanying ribbing in good spirits. The difference compared with school - everyone _ wants _ to be here. 

He learns the language of the Circus at Sarratt. _ Lamplighters, Burrowers, Scalphunters, Shoemakers.2 _It feels half made-up, juvenile; another echo of schooldays. _ This is our gang, you’re not in it. _

He can hear Leclerc’s voice in his head, sneering, dismissive. But the attitude of the trainers - jokey, self deprecating, sardonic, all while pushing them hard - makes it sound normal. 

He wipes the flannel over the back of his neck again, pushes it up into his hair to cool the sweat. The nights, somehow, feel more oppressive than the days. He flexes the fingers of his right hand, curls them into a fist. Three days of combat training in the oven that is the Sarratt gym. Wrestling, hand-to-hand fighting. Echoes, far too many echoes, of the Major, but with one vast difference: today he was praised for his cool under pressure. 

The detachment that takes hold of him at times now makes everything calmer, cleaner. There’s no rush of blood, no thrill at the strong, live body under his hands. He’s not sure if it’s an improvement or a failing, but it’s all he’s got. 

~ ~ ~ ~

It’s a month into his time at the Circus - a month of quiet, constant work, lowly, unobtrusive: one unshowy cog in the vast machine - before he’s aware that his connection to Smiley is known. He finds it hard to believe that anyone knows who he _ is, _ let alone his provenance. He’s embraced being faceless, one of many, anonymous in the spiderweb of the Circus with its maze of corridors, odd little rooms, floor upon floor of meetings, interrogations, machinations. 

He’s nose deep in the latest copies of _ Berliner Zeitung _ when he hears an altercation in the office. Connie Sachs, _ Mother Russia,_ a steel trap mind in a bag lady’s body, is yelling at someone. 

“You keep your nose out of my office, you little weasel!”

Avery looks across to Barbara, one of the other researchers. She shrugs, eloquently, and puts her head down again. 

“I just came for a look at George’s latest _ protegé,” _ drawls a voice. Male, oddly inflected, too smooth. “He _ does _ so like his waifs and strays.”

“_ You _ were one of George’s strays, you little blighter,” Connie retorts. Avery wishes he could see her face. He’s never heard her being unkind to someone before. “He should have left you in the street where you belonged.” 

“Tsh, Connie, what a thing to say.” The voice sounds wholly unruffled by Connie’s abuse. “I come in friendship, honest open friendship, to extend the hand of greeting to our latest acquisition.”

“You come in sneakyship to nose about where you don’t belong,” Connie says, at an only slightly lower decibel. “Now get out of my office unless you have a legitimate request for something.” 

There’s silence for a moment, as if a mute standoff is occurring, and then - Avery dips his head back to his paper, anxious not to be caught staring - the door opens and a man comes out. Short, immaculate, expensively dressed, but somehow - is it the flashiness of his tie, his pocket square? - not quite _ right. _Avery stares at the paper, feels his face reddening as the man pauses, clearly eyeing him up. 

“Oh yes,” the man says, and there’s something queer in his voice, something _ insinuating, _ “yes, I can see it now. Ciao, Connie!” he shouts, as if she’s deaf, and a friend; she is neither. 

There is a heavy, angry silence radiating from the office. Avery thinks it best to keep his head down. It’s a policy that has served him well so far. 

~ ~ ~ ~

Later that same day, late that evening in fact, when the archive is empty except for the glow of Connie’s lamp in the office, Avery sits up from his work and sees Connie in her doorway, a half-full glass of whiskey in her hand, a half-smoked fag in the other. A stranger would think her kindly, eccentric, _ harmless, _with her misshapen cardigan and her button bright eyes. She takes a gulp from her glass that Avery would choke on and says, “don’t you have a home to go to, John?” 

Avery stretches, looks at his watch. At _ Fred’s _watch. Half seven. No wonder he’s hungry. 

“I’m so sorry, Miss Sachs. I’ll be getting along.” Interrogation training, day three, Sarratt. _ Avoid giving up information by answering a different question to the one you’ve been asked. _

“Oh I didn’t mean that, dear,” Connie says, and her smile is an almost winsome thing. It’s likely she was a tiny, birdlike creature when young, but it’s very difficult to imagine. “And I’ve told you before to call me Connie. Now get along with you, you make the place look untidy.” 

“Yes Miss - sorry, _ Connie _.” He gets awkwardly to his feet, scraping the chair noisily. He’s coatless, it’s a warm day. He’s halfway out of the door and Connie is more than halfway down her glass when he gathers his courage and asks, “Er - Connie? Who was that, earlier today?”

Connie snorts. “You mean the weasel?”

“Er - yes?”

“That little rat,” she says, enunciating clearly, “is Toby Esterhase. And he’s the slipperiest, slimiest, most venomous little snake you will ever meet.”

“Gosh,” says Avery, for want of anything better to say. Something about Connie makes him want to not swear. As if she’s an aunt, or the headmaster’s wife. “Is he - is he an informer?”

Connie laughs, a great cackling thing that slops whiskey against her glass and jiggles all over her. 

“Oh I must tell George that one!” she gasps, face red, eyes bright. “He’ll love that! No,” she says, composing herself, “no, Tiny Tobe is _ one of us_, more’s the pity. He’s one of the Lamplighters. Surveillance, all that.” She takes a drag from her cigarette. “Voyeurism and nosing. He’s _ ideally _ suited for it.” 

“Gosh,” says Avery again. 

“Right, along you go,” Connie says, abruptly, almost shooing him out of the door. “Go and do whatever it is you young people like to do.”

And all that Avery can say in reply is, “Goodnight.”

~ ~ ~ ~

It’s sometime during the World Cup that he reads it. 

Avery knows little about football, cares less, but the further England progress the more pervasive it becomes; someone has brought a tiny television into the break room; conversations in the corridor about Hungary, the Soviet Union, West Germany are as likely to be about football as current ops. Avery reads the football pages of the newspaper every day, sometimes if he’s home listens to the match report on the radio. It’s another form of information gathering, of research. He’s learning what he needs to pass as _ one of us. _He’s drawn Portugal in the office sweepstake, and feels a duty to them to follow their progress. The buzz of excitement in the building is like sensation returning to a dead limb; a distant tingle of pins and needles, threatening pain. 

He works solely on East Germany, and the map he once had spread out on his desk is folded away now, under piles of reports. He carries it in his head, the names familiar as friends; not just Leipzig, Breslau, Dresden, Stettin, but Gleiwitz, Hirschberg, Wismar. He can’t remember the Germany of his schoolroom any more; how it used to look, before the Soviets, before the War. 

He’s working on regional newspapers, halfway through the _ Schweriner Volkszeitung _when he finds a report on a prisoner shot attempting to escape from jail. The article is brief, telegrammatic. Male, 41, Polish. Imprisoned for espionage. Commandant of the Schwerin jail to be commended on his prompt action. 

Facts rush relentlessly through his mind, like a guidebook: Schwerin is a large picturesque city, on a lake, in the north of the country. It has a Gothic Cathedral, a Castle. 

Avery can see it on the map in his head, clear as a target at the shooting range. 

He cannot - for all he desperately tries - ignore the fact that the next nearest city is 43 miles away, across the border in West Germany. 

_ Lübeck_. 

His stomach drops. He feels his pulse throb at his temples as he scours the sparse text again, searching for hope, for any chance that he’s wrong. For a name, a description, anything to show there was more than one _ Male, 41, Polish, imprisoned for espionage_. 

But it’s futile. He knows, with inescapable, bleak certainty, the aching, monstrous truth that he’s been dreading for months and months, ever since that last terrible day in Lübeck. It’s _ Fred_. Of course it’s Fred. 

“John!” comes a yell from the doorway, making his heart jolt. He drops the paper to the table, looks up, guilty and ashamed and reeling. It’s Thompson. “You bloody lucky swine!” Thompson continues, and Avery is so shocked by the utter wrongness that he nearly laughs aloud. He clamps down on it, on everything threatening to spill out of him.

“What d’you mean?” he asks, aiming for light confusion, and hoping Thompson doesn’t notice.

“Your team! They’re in the quarters. _ Portugal_, John. Have you not been listening? They’ve beaten Bulgaria! They’re through for sure now. That Torres3 has done it again!” 

“Oh, wonderful,” he manages, feebly. 

“Brazil look like they’re out of it. Would you believe it? Greatest player in the world and they’re beaten by bloody Hungary!” 

“Gosh,” Avery says. It feels like Thompson is speaking a different language. 

“Bloody Soviets look like they’re through as well,” Thompson rumbles on, thankfully oblivious to Avery’s muted reaction. “Unless Chile kick their arses in the final game, but I can’t see that happening, can you?”

“No,” Avery says, trying to sound robust. “No, I can’t see that happening.”

“Hepworth has got the Soviets,” Thompson says, in a conspiratorial half-whisper. “I’m buggered if I’m celebrating _ them _ getting to the quarters.” 

Avery has done his best to keep his head down and not rock the boat, these past months in the Circus, but he’s only too aware that there is more gossip and backbiting and cliquishness in Six than in a local WI chapter. The reason for the Thompson/Hepworth spat is lost in the mists of time, but it’s one of the well-known stories. Like Bill Haydon’s only half-comical hatred of the Americans, like Control’s iron grip on all his puppet strings, like George Smiley’s retirements, it has gained mythological status. 

“I didn’t know the Soviets were that good at football,” Avery tries, dredging his memory for the facts he’s picked up from his research. 

“Nobody bloody did! Least of all Hepworth! He was like a bear with a sore head when we did the draw. He’s going to be unbearable if they get through. _ More _unbearable,” Thompson adds, darkly. 

Avery summons what feels like a smile. He’s found that a passive silence is so often taken for tacit agreement. 

“Anyway,” Thompson blusters, “thought I’d tell you. Case you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t.” Avery is amazed at how steady his voice is. “I do appreciate you telling me. Thanks, Brian.”

Thompson sketches a salute, a gesture that looks ridiculous coming from him, and disappears into the corridor. 

Avery slumps into his chair like he’s been shot, hands shaking, trying to haul in great lungfuls of air, trying not to cry. There is a great howling emptiness inside him, bewildering in its enormity. He cannot comprehend the wrongness of things. Fred can’t be dead. It’s impossible. The sheer vitality of him, his wiry strength, his eagerness, the warmth of him. He can’t be _ dead_. Even though it was more than likely, it’s still completely impossible. 

_ Shot_. He grasps hold of the word, a drowning man clinging to driftwood. It doesn’t say _ shot dead. _This tiny candle flicker of hope is enough to bolster unrealistic hope. 

They only get the local East German papers once a week, so he will have to wait four days to see if there is any follow up. 

There is another option, of course. He could contact the offices of the _ Schweriner Volkszeitung _himself, now. It would be easy to get the information. Or he could wait four days. 

He is a coward, he knows. He waits. Because until he reads the confirmation, he can pretend it hasn’t happened. He can pretend Fred was just wounded. That it was someone else. He can live in hope. Because the only thing worse than the not knowing would be knowing for sure. 

~ ~ ~ ~

It’s three days later when Connie sends him on an errand. She usually bosses the girls into running them, into being glorified postal workers, because despite her terrifying women’s libber appearance, she is as traditional as everyone else in the Circus. Her boys are special, too good for menial tasks. It’s the girls who have to make the coffee for her. 

And so he’s surprised when she asks him to deliver a file in person, although less so when he realises it’s to Smiley. 

“George will love to see you,” Connie says. Avery highly doubts it. “He’ll be glad to know you’ve settled in so well.” She beams at him, a rather watery smile. She’s started earlier than usual today. 

It’s the first time Avery has been sent to a floor other than his own. Smiley is on the fourth floor, as befits his status as Head of North European Affairs. It’s a maze, all the doors look the same, all the corridors a bleak mix of pre-war wood panelling and post-war institutional paint. He thrums with low level anxiety that he might get lost, or - worse - be _ seen _ to be lost.

It reminds him of a time he’d been sent to the nurse at prep school. He couldn’t remember the way, ended up lost and tearful for what seemed like hours, aware only that he’d be told off, possibly sent home. The fear had been overwhelming. 

He pushes the memory down. He knows - of course he knows - that he can just _ ask _ for directions, that no-one will jeer or send him wrong or dob him in. He won’t get sent home. He won’t get excluded. 

He still feels it though.

He’s sweating when he reaches Smiley’s door, uncomfortable in his clothes, faintly breathless. He tries to compose himself as he knocks on the door.

“Come in,” says the familiar voice. 

He hasn’t seen George Smiley since graduating from Sarratt. Smiley had come and given a talk. A thing he did every time, apparently. The part of Avery that still blamed Smiley for Fred’s fate had wanted to hate it. But it had been the best thing of the whole three months. It had made startlingly clear the cavernous gap between the Circus and The Department, between Smiley and Leclerc. Smiley was unglamorous, unheroic, clear eyed and not given to mythologising. He left them with an impression of gravitas, competence, realism, and tenacity. It had been quietly astounding. 

And here that man is, small and grey and unassuming behind the thick glasses. Even in his own office he seems to be in the background.

“Connie sent this as a matter of urgency, sir,” Avery says, only realising as he hands the file across that Smiley is not alone in the office. 

“Ah, John! Thank you.” Smiley is already flicking through the file. “Ah yes,” he murmurs to himself, as if Avery has already left. “Yes, yes, this is exactly what I had feared.” The room descends into concentrated silence as Smiley continues to read. 

The other man in the office clears his throat rather theatrically, and Smiley looks up, startled. The faintest of flushes blooms across his cheeks. He looks at Avery, who has the odd feeling that Smiley has somehow brought himself back into focus. 

“Excellent, thank you John,” he says. He flicks a glance at the other man, who Avery can see from the corner of his eye is smirking slightly behind his cigarette. 

“_Thank _you, Peter,” Smiley says, deliberately. ‘Peter’ breaks out a full grin, boyish and startlingly attractive. 

“Do excuse me, John,” Smiley says, “I forget my manners dreadfully. Peter Guillam, back from field work in North Africa - John Avery, one of Connie’s newest, specialising in East Germany.”

“John,” nods Peter Guillam from his chair, his face pleasant but neutral. No grin for Avery. “Mr Guillam,” he replies, politely. 

“Oh, Christ, call me Peter,” says Guillam, wearily amused. He takes a drag from his cigarette and eyes Avery. Avery’s not sure if it’s Smiley’s influence, or if Guillam is always this deliberate. He holds his gaze as well he can. 

“Settling in ok?” is all Guillam says, lightly, after a long silence. He looks like an undergraduate, astonishingly young to have been doing field work, but there’s a translucent quality to his face, smudged blue under the eyes, like Anthony would get when he was poorly. Considering he’s been out in Morocco, he looks washed out, sickly. In contrast, his voice is pleasant, rich, like a northern boy who’s taken elocution lessons to polish up his vowels. 

“Yes, thanks,” Avery replies, his own voice sounding reedy in comparison. “It’s very interesting work.” He sounds like a sap. 

“Have you been looking at anything in particular this week?” asks Smiley, and Avery can tell he’s being kind, in his clumsy way, and that really he should just leave as quickly as possible, but it has been _ so _long since he’s felt kindness that he blurts out without thinking “Schwerin, Mr Smiley.” 

“Oh.” Smiley draws the word out sepulchrally. Avery wants to disappear completely. He feels his face redden, and waits desperately for Smiley to dismiss him. 

Instead the worst happens. 

“I’m so sorry, John,” Smiley says, gravely, and Avery feels the ground rush away. There is no misinterpreting his tone. Smiley _ knows. _

Avery cannot speak for fear of giving himself away. He simply stares at Smiley, wishing for invisibility. Wishing for no more of this understated sympathy. 

“I got the final report this morning,” Smiley says, “and I wanted to tell you in person. I’m,” he pauses, unblinking, “I’m very sorry you had to find out this way.” His eyes are pale, horribly fishlike, and his voice is terrible in its kindness. 

Avery nods jerkily, painfully aware of Peter Guillam’s curious gaze, of Smiley’s patience. Finally, he manages to whisper, “It’s true then? It’s - it’s definitely F- Leiser?”

“I’m afraid so. Unmistakably.”

“And, he’s - ” Avery cannot bear to actually say the words. 

“I’m sorry, John. Yes, the shot was fatal.” 

Avery nods again, a horrible spasm, his movements beyond his control. 

He’s distantly aware of movement, of being steered and manoeuvred into a chair, of a glass of something being pressed into his hand. The smell of it turns his stomach, and Peter Guillam is standing over him saying “Go on, it’ll do you good.” 

“I’m sorry,” he says, as he gulps awkwardly at the brandy. 

“Don’t be,” says Guillam, briskly offhand. 

_ It’s too soon, _ he wants to say, ridiculously. _ I was waiting until tomorrow. You’ve ruined it. _

He sits there, the brandy nauseating in his stomach, Guillam looming, Smiley retreating, and feels that last tiny flicker of hope vanish, and there is nothing but roaring, implacable emptiness. 

~ ~ ~ ~

Portugal meet England in the Semi-Finals, and lose. England go on to win the World Cup, beating West Germany. The Beatles are at the top of the charts again. 4 England is swinging in the summer sunshine. 

Avery notices none of it. There is a silent barrier between him and the world. He can see out, but nothing penetrates. 

~ ~ ~ ~

Some time later, when the pavements are messy and treacherous with dead wet leaves, things begin to seep into his consciousness. He’s aware that there has been an unimaginable disaster in a small Welsh town;5 that the French and the Soviets are now working on nuclear research together; that - the news that hums around every floor of the Circus - Blake6 has escaped the Scrubs and is somewhere behind the Iron Curtain. 

Part of him wishes for the silent barrier back, to block out the horror and tragedy. Part of him finds perverse comfort in the world reflecting his own state. 

~ ~ ~ ~

In the grey, miserable, foggy winter months - bookie’s odds of a White Christmas lengthening by the day - he dreams almost constantly of Leiser. Leiser sitting with him, in a cafe, drinking coffee, and telling him that no, he isn’t dead, he escaped, he got out, he came back. Leiser in some indiscriminate foreign city, catching up with him on the street, telling him no, he isn’t dead, it is a mistake, it got reported wrong. Leiser lying beside him in the bed in his grotty bedsit, the one he lives in because he couldn’t stand the flat after Sarah left, and he stupidly wouldn’t take a Circus when it was offered flat because it felt like Smiley’s charity. Leiser - _ Fred - _leaning over him in that bed, in sharp focus so close up, his hand gentle on Avery’s face, telling him, no he isn’t dead, he’d promised him a next time, hadn’t he?

Waking from that particular dream, Avery curls onto his side and cries in great gulping sobs, pressing his fingers to his hot face, half-ashamed of the sounds he is making, choking and snotty. When Connie Sachs sees him at the Circus later that day she fusses round him like a mother hen, telling him he looks so poorly, and sending Emma, who has better things to do, and is higher ranked than him, out to Boots to get him some cold remedies and Lucozade. Avery bears Connie’s fluttering concern as he bears all of her attentions; like a favoured child with a beloved but dotty aunt. 

~ ~ ~ ~

Somehow - although time means little to him, minutes stretching interminably, months disappearing into the void of his memory - a year has passed since Mayfly lumbered into disaster. He thinks about Fred - he _ always _thinks about Fred. He lies awake in his narrow bedsit bed and remembers, in the dark, how Fred felt under his hands, how he felt with Fred’s hands on him. He tells himself the story of that night again and again, trying to fix the slippery, ever-diminishing details. He remembers the photograph of Leiser Leclerc had showed him, when he’d made that first, fatal, offhand decision. Leiser as a youth, twenty years and a war ago. Avery wishes he had it, wishes he had something to keep Fred’s face from disappearing like a photo bleaching in the sun. The thought of Leclerc brings a stab of anger, and he pushes it away, firmly. Clears his mind with an effort, and thinks again of the smell of cold straw, the blurry light of the moon, the strong, livewire warmth of Fred against him.

~ ~ ~ ~

“_George _ wants to see you,” Connie says one morning, conspiratorially. There is only _ one _ George, even if - in all likelihood - there are three or four in the building. And so Avery ascends to the fourth floor again, to the scene of his last embarrassing disgrace, waits for one of the Mothers to gesture him onwards with a nod, and knocks on Smiley’s door. 

The room is much as it was six? seven? months previously, except for the absence of Peter Guillam. Avery doesn’t think anything Smiley can tell him will be worse than his last interview, but he’s still glad to be unobserved. 

“Ah, John. Come in, come in,” Smiley says, getting awkwardly to his feet in a gentlemanly manner. “Please, sit. May I offer you some tea?” 

“No, thank you, Mr Smiley,” Avery says politely, caught off guard. “Unless,” he stammers, “you’re having some too.” 

“Well I think I might,” Smiley says, as if it’s a rare treat and Avery is the excuse for it. “Margaret,” he says, in a formal voice, into his intercom, “tea, if you would be so kind. And if you can rustle up a biscuit or two?” 

“There,” he says, with apparent contentment, bringing his focus back to Avery. 

Avery smiles, a poor, weak thing, and waits for Smiley to continue. 

“Connie speaks very highly of you,” Smiley says, in avuncular tones, with the ghost of a smile. It seems impossible, but Avery thinks George Smiley may be teasing him, a little. 

“I’m - very glad?” he replies, embarrassed to hear it come out as a question rather than a statement. 

“One of her _ bright boys_,” Smiley continues, with emphasis, as though it’s a quotation. “I’m glad to hear it, John,” he says, and seems genuinely to mean it. Avery sits ramrod straight, trying not to fidget, a schoolboy called to the Headmaster’s office unsure what he’s done wrong. Best to wait it out until the blow falls. The less he says the less he can incriminate himself. 

“So, John,” Smiley says, “this may be unexpected, especially after the unfortunate - ” he halts, as Margaret brings in the tea, waits patiently until she leaves, snicking the door silently behind her, “yes the - er _ unfortunate _ experience you had in Germany.” Smiley’s voice is calm, even, his face at his blankest, and Avery braces himself for what is to come.

“I wanted to ask you, John,” Smiley continues, bland and inoffensive, “how you would feel about going into the field? Ah,” he holds up a hand, silencing the protest he can see Avery forming, “I would understand completely if you said no, but may I give you the details before you decide?” 

Avery nods, mutely, concentrating on keeping his teacup from rattling in its saucer. Smiley must be mad, but he is too polite to say anything. He just needs to sit through it until it’s over. 

_ It _turns out to be an assignment in Vienna. A covert op, masquerading as a book editor in a small publishing house there, ostensibly working with a photographer (“Peter Guillam, John, you remember meeting him some time ago?”) on a new look at Vienna. Actually there to observe a man called Steiner, who may or may not be selling information to the Soviets. 

The initial fear and dismay that had washed over him at Smiley’s first words are fading as he listens. He realises why Smiley is asking him. It’s only a step sideways from his old, pre-Department life. 

He also can’t say he can’t do it, that he’s not capable, not suited, because – damn George Smiley – he is probably more suited than anyone in the building, save Smiley himself. And the fact that Smiley is _ asking _ , or making a pretence of asking, when surely he spends his days _ telling _ agents what their assignments are, means there is no way he can turn this down without looking churlish, ungrateful, _ frightened. _

And so he agrees to it.

“Peter will brief you more fully,” Smiley says, at what Avery discovers is the end of the conversation. “You could not be in more capable hands,” he says, with a brief lifting of the corners of his mouth.

It’s a rare straightforward statement, thinks Avery, as he tramps down the staircase back to Connie’s domain. It’s odd, in this building of sly jabs and self deprecation and typical British understatement, and especially unusual from the often crab-like George Smiley. Perhaps that Head Boy charm of Guillam’s hides a decent agent, after all.

~ ~ ~ ~

1 Sarratt is the location of the agent training school and interrogation centre, colloquially known as The Nursery.

2 Lamplighters - The people who carry out surveillance, clear drop boxes, intercept mail, etc. Based in Acton. Burrowers - Researchers. Scalphunters - The people who handle the dirty work (ie. kidnapping, bringing defectors across the border). Based in Brixton. Shoemakers – MI6 document forgers; they provide passports and other documents when needed.

3 José Torres scored the winner against Bulgaria in the second match of the group stage, although Eusébio, who also scored in that match, went on to win the Golden Boot, scoring nine goals in the tournament. Hey, what is research for if you can't share it?

4 _Revolver _was top of the album charts for seven weeks, August-September 1966.

5 [The Aberfan disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster)

6 [George Blake ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Blake)was a British Spy turned Soviet double agent, arrested and imprisoned in 1961. He escaped from Wormwood Scrubs Prison in October 1966.

**Author's Note:**

> A glass of creme de menthe to [jennytheshipper](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennytheshipper/pseuds/Jennytheshipper) for her sterling beta work on this, and also for saying, ages ago, after I'd written (what has now turned out to be the first fic in a trilogy) [Border Crossing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11308110>%20Border%20Crossing</a>) "But what IF..."
> 
> Events in the eight years between _The Looking Glass War_ and _ Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy_ are not clearly documented by JLC, but there are enough glimpses and mentions to make it possible to sketch a timeline. As we find out in _Tinker_, Peter Guillam was running a network in Morocco, only for it to be blown, and all his agents hanged. I've slotted this into 1966, which is feasible, as the last mention of Guillam in England was in 1962 in _The Spy Who Came In From The Cold._
> 
> Smiley's age has always been a moveable feast, but Guillam and Avery are contemporaries, and both about 33/34 at the time of this fic. 
> 
> My Avery and Leiser are definitely book based, but my Smiley and Guillam (and also Connie and Tiny Tobe) are equal parts book and BBC-1979-telly based. My boy Guillam as played by Michael Jayston looks like [this](https://idlesuperstar.tumblr.com/post/162978265062/current-sexual-orientation-sassy-flirty) in this fic.


End file.
